


Lost and Found

by colazitron



Series: 2016 December Holiday Fic Countdown [11]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Canon, F/M, canon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 23:41:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8820934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colazitron/pseuds/colazitron
Summary: In an alternate universe where the Rebellion was Enough, Poe crashes on Jakku on a mission for Senator Organa, and meets Rey.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aimmyarrowshigh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimmyarrowshigh/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I am in now way affiliated with Star Wars and am merely borrowing these characters to play a little. I'm sharing this purely for entertainment reasons.

Poe can't stay, and Rey can't leave.

He asks her to come with him anyway, and she looks at him like she wants to say 'yes', like she wants nothing more than to pack up all three of her things, and follow him and BB-8 onto his X-Wing fighter and leave this wretched, dusty hell-hole behind. Instead she sighs and wraps her arms around herself, and says, “I can't.”

Poe knew she'd say that.

He meets her when his X-Wing's hyperdrive inexplicably malfunctions just as he's by-passing Jakku, and has to half-crash land on the planet instead of sailing right past it. Poe can fly anything, and as such he can _repair_ most things as well. It comes with the territory. You need to know what's going on under the proverbial hood, otherwise you're fucked out there in the vast expanses of the galaxy. He's learned to love the craft of flying and flying machines hand in hand, hanging onto his mother's skirts; or, well, her pilot's uniform. And even so, Poe can't figure out what's wrong. He sends a call back to Coruscant that he's stranded for the time being. Senator Organa needs him back by tomorrow, but when he looks around there's nothing but sand, sand, sand, and the endless expanse of the sky. In between, the air shivers with heat.

“Alright, buddy,” Poe says to BB-8. “Time to find ourselves a mechanic.”

BB-8 beeps and whirs his answer and starts scanning the surroundings immediately. The fighter technically has the stronger sensors, but Poe doesn't want to risk draining the battery or doing any more damage than has already somehow occurred.

[Friend-Poe, Friend-Poe!] BB-8 beeps then. [A hovercraft is approaching, Friend-Poe!]

Poe grips his blaster a little more tightly and secures his stance, but the hovercraft – the make of which he's never seen before – comes to a slow stop, and when the figure on it pulls down the scrap of fabric wrapped around their face to protect it against the wind and sand, it reveals a far younger face than he anticipated.

“Are you stuck?” she asks.

“Just taking in the scenery,” Poe drawls, unsure if this is a trap. Jakku's not exactly the nicest place around.

She looks around like she's confused.

“Alright?” she says.

Poe wills himself to relax a bit.

“Actually, yeah, I am stuck. You know any mechanics?”

She beams at him, and pulls her goggles off as well, and – wow. The effect is a bit like squinting against the Jakku sun.

“I'm Rey,” she says. “I'm a mechanic.”

She's not really, he learns later. She's a scavenger, but she can put almost anything back together, and she built that hovercraft herself.

“Well, any chance you can work out what's wrong with her?” Poe asks, patting his fighter on the nose.

Rey jumps off her hovercraft, pulls her goggles back down and approaches them almost carelessly.

“What's wrong?”

[The hyperdrive malfunctioned], BB-8 beeps at her.

“Hm,” she replies. “And you can't figure out why?”

Poe stares at her. BB-8 seems unconcerned, which is a first for the little astrodroid.

[The standard diagnostics yielded no significant results], it says.

“What are the insignificant ones?” she asks, sliding underneath the nose to fiddle with the control panel.

[Fluctuation in ion concentration and temperature.]

She hums again and fiddles.

“I can't be sure, but you probably have a hair fracture leak in your cooling system somewhere,” she says. “It can be hard for the standard procedures to detect but it's fairly easy to find when you know what to look for. I'm not sure I can do it out here though, so if you can get her to fly at all, I can drag you back home and check there.”

Poe can get her to fly, of course. He can fly anything, even if it's barely a meter off the ground and wobbling like a stintaril.

By the next afternoon Rey has found the leak.

By that evening she's found out the bargaining price and Poe accidentally drives it up by revealing his connections to Senator Organa and, more importantly, her money.

By the morning after, Poe has begged her twice to stop apologising for how much longer he'll be stuck here now that she has to go scavenge for some obscure parts they need to get the replacement cooling rods. It's _Poe's_ fault after all.

A week later they've spent every waking minute scavenging, sharing stories in the comfortable half-anonymity of new found friendship, and Poe is sure he wakes every morning not from the rising of the sun, but the rising of Rey's smile with it. She looks out at it like she finds it just as beautiful as the thousands she's seen before.

(One of her walls is covered in scratch marks that count the days she's been here. When you get lost, you're supposed to stay where you are and wait to be found, she explains. Poe doesn't ask. The war took from all of them.)

She moves over the treacherously ever-moving dunes and through the fragile wreckage of old star ships with a careless certainty he's never seen before. The only one he's ever seen move through the world like she does was Luke Skywalker, Senator Organa's brother, and he's a Jedi Master. He moves through the world so aware of it he doesn't have to fear it. But that's not what Rey does. Rey's not aware. She moves seemingly without any regard for her surroundings, like she's sure the world won't hurt her, the way a child does. Poe feels his heart tug when she smiles, and when she doesn't.

He asks her to come with him, when she fixes his X-Wing a week later. She says she can't.

[Goodbye, Friend-Rey], BB-8 beeps sadly, and Poe gives her a hug that lasts too long, and feels too much like letting go of something vital for a girl he's known for only a week. And yet, without her smile, the darkness in between the stars seems more endless than before, and the sparkling lights of Coruscant seem dim when he reaches it. Even auntie Leia's veiled concern can't coax more than a tired smile from him.

It takes two months, and then one day, when he's back from a mission with Finn, feeling buoyed by the success and laughing with their arms slung around each other, there she is, standing in the hangar, looking smaller and skinnier than he remembers.

“Rey,” he says, and Finn's eyes widen, but he nods at her politely and steps aside.

“What happened to waiting?” he asks, for lack of any other coherent thoughts in his mind.

She shrugs, looking a little uncomfortable, and a little radiant even now. Then she smiles and opens her arms just a little.

“I think you came and found me,” she says, and Poe rushes forward to wrap her up in his arms again.

“Yeah, I did,” he says, breathing in the scent of sand, and life, and sun, that clings to her even here. “I'm glad you came to find me.”

“I'm glad I knew where you'd gone.”

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> Come leave me prompts for my fic advent on [my tumblr](http://fille-lioncelle.tumblr.com/ask) if you want. :)


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